Indeed. I can’t code well unless I visualise the problem spatially, perhaps I’ll try Software Artist as a job title and see how that goes 🙂 From your experience of your own work and that of other artists that you know, do you think people respond to the “done really well” aspect of a piece more than any message the artist is trying to impart?

There’s an art to coding too. It can have its own form of elegance, purity or complexity when done well. It’s about being beyond purely functional. But yes, applies to engineering, physical chemistry, mathematics and everything I reckon.

Thanks Nick. Nice to know someone actually reads this stuff, let alone agrees with it! My worlds of art, photography and music are so interwoven and eclectic in taste that their boundaries are so blurred and become one thing anyway.
Be assured my drawing board is very busy at the moment with new things for Cumbria, Lancashire, Co. Durham and Stirlingshire all lined up for next spring, but they all take time to develop and realise. Patience.

was good to meet you the other evening at the NVA Conic hill thing. Was interesting to take part in as it gave that different perspective on a piece. And I like that concept that art, in part, is something done really well. Makes sense to other spheres as well, e.g. some engineering projects, that evoke the same kind of response.

I too have always been fascinated by the parallels you draw between art and music, and you have nailed it with “What they both have in common is a desire for creating things of beauty. The art-world seems to have a problem with aesthetics – that things can be made just to be beautiful”

Yes, yes, absolutely, and I have always suffered, no, enjoyed immensely, the sensation of extraordinary music in my head (mostly instrumental jazz pieces) accompanying me while out shooting distant landscape photographs in extraordinary (remote) places – and very often the finished picture still contains that music when I view the image years later…. could there be such a thing as a ‘latent soundtrack’ to accompany creative works, a remembrance of its creation process perhaps?

TOTALLY agree with your conclusion about the inherent quality of great work, and have always been wary of art that appears to have been ‘too easy’ to create, a kind of bullshit detector / radar that has kept me clear of work that appears to be empty of integrity….

Well-written: “Tchaikovsky was unapologetic in his desire to make music that was elegant, emotional and beautiful” and I completely agree with your sentiment…..

“But it’s beauty done really well.

And that’s art.”

Yep, let’s have some more……. now get back to that drawing board and make summat lovely for us al to enjoy please!